Person attributes
Valery Valeryevich Kovalev (April 24, 1970, Neuruppin, Potsdam, GDR - December 31, 2021, Moscow, Russia) was a Russian entrepreneur, founder and owner of one of the largest Russian online stores - <url>. According to the Forbes rating, in 2014, the company headed by Valery Kovalev was in sixth place among online stores in Russia with revenue of 310 million US dollars.
Early years
Valery Kovalev was born on April 24, 1970 in the city of Neuruppin (GDR) in the family of the Soviet military test pilot Valery Ivanovich Kovalev (12.12.1946 - 05.01.2004), who served in the Western Group of Troops. In connection with his father's service, the family moved many times within the USSR - from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Tbilisi. During his studies, Valery changed four schools. In his youth, Kovalev was engaged in an aero club, planning to become a military pilot following the example of his father and grandfather, but when he entered flight school, he could not pass a medical commission due to vision problems. In 1987, he entered the Moscow Aviation Institute, the Faculty of Aircraft and Helicopter Engineering, from which he graduated in 1994 with a degree in flight test system engineer.
Entrepreneurial activity
Store Holodilnik.ru in the Solnechnogorsk city district of the Moscow region
During his student years, Kovalev organized, together with his wife Svetlana, wholesale and retail trade in refrigerators, renting part of the area in the Svet store for this purpose. In 1997, he became the founder of CJSC Trading House Edil. The first experience of promoting goods using Internet resources was acquired in the late 1990s, when he arranged on the website adeal.ru a showcase with a list of products sold by Edil. In 2003, being the owner of nine stores and the official representative of such manufacturers of household appliances as LG and Electrolux, he registered the website Holodilnik.ru with a catalog of goods and began to gradually translate the trade into an online format. Two years later, the assortment range offered by Kovalev's company expanded, and the website improved: for example, consumers got the opportunity not only to use the "Table of Orders" category
He died on December 31, 2021 in Moscow at the age of 52; the cause of death was acute coronary insufficiency.
He was buried on January 5, 2022 at the Perepechinsky cemetery of Solnechnogorsk district next to his father's grave.
